Susie O’Brien: Despite tragedy, children need to enjoy freedom
The deaths of four children knocked down on a Sydney footpath is horrific but we still need to give our children the freedom that will build their resilience, writes Susie O’Brien.
Susie O'Brien
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What do we have to do to keep our kids safe? It’s the thought on many parents’ minds this week after learning of the deaths of four children walking on a footpath in a Sydney suburb last weekend. Seeing tragedy strike children in such a random way fuels our worst possible fears: that our kids will come to harm when they’re out of our homes without us to protect them.
Our first instinct is to keep them inside, where we assume they will be safer than outside.
But that is not the answer. Accidents like this do happen, but they are very, very rare. We must not use them to limit the chance our children have to move freely around their neighbourhoods.
Saturday night started like any other for the children from the extended Abdallah and Sakr families. Seven kids were excited to be spending the evening at their aunt’s house while their parents attended a 21st. Just before the babysitter arrived, they were given permission to walk up the road to get ice creams.
It was still light and their parents had every reason to think they’d be safe. They were in Oatlands, a suburban area with a crime rate half the NSW average. It was a hot summer night and they were just around the corner from home.
And then something unthinkable happened. A ute driven by an allegedly drunk driver ran a red light, apparently ended up on the wrong side of the road and mounted the footpath.
Minutes later four children were dead and three others injured. The carnage was so awful that even seasoned emergency services workers and police officers were traumatised, describing it as one of the most tragic scenes they’d ever seen.
It’s been impossible not to be moved by the grief of the children’s parents. I can’t imagine what they are going through. The sight of Mrs Abdallah, still and numb, kneeling and praying at the scene of the accident is hard to forget. She says she’s still waiting for her children Antony, Angelina and Sienna to come home.
The thought of Mr Abdallah telling the children — who were excited to have a bit of freedom with their cousins — that they “should be OK”. They should have been OK, but they weren’t.
It’s no wonder parents are keeping their kids inside more and more. These days, only one third of 8-15-year-olds are allowed to venture more than 15 minutes from home without an adult.
VicHealth research shows many parents are worried about stranger danger, abductions, traffic accidents, bullies and animal attacks. And yet the same study shows most children feel secure in their ability to manage such problems and relish the idea of having fun, being allowed to “muck around”, “tell secrets” and have some time out.
Parents acknowledge they are being over-protective but conclude it was “better safe than sorry”.
We have to keep things in perspective and not use this tragic accident as a reason to limit the independence of our children.
Each year a number of pedestrians lose their life on Victorian roads, but accidents like this involving children on footpaths are extremely rare. Most pedestrians who are injured or die on our roads are older and crossing roads at crowded city intersections.
And yet more needs to be done to make neighbourhoods as safe as possible. Mr Abdallah was right to call on drivers to be more careful. In light of the accident, locals from around Oatlands want the council to put in speed humps and safety mirrors to slow traffic on the road.
More can also be done to stop drink driving, which is one of the biggest killers on Victorian roads. About one in five drivers has a blood-alcohol level over the legal limit.
In this case, the driver of the car is alleged to have been three times over the limit, which would have had a critical impact on his ability to control his powerful ute.
Stronger licence bans for drink drivers, extended use of alcohol interlocks and lower blood alcohol limits have all been successful in bringing down the road toll.
It’s not just about punishment, but prevention as well.
We need to do more to make drinking and driving socially unacceptable. This social awareness is important — it includes getting friends to speak up to stop drinkers driving.
We are left to heed Mr Abdallah’s warning to “make sure you love your loved ones, your kids especially, because you don’t know when …”
But we can’t live our lives waiting for the next one-in-a-million accident to occur. We need to let our children learn responsibility and resilience by letting them explore their neighbourhoods with their friends and siblings.
Terrible, senseless, random things happen, even when kids are doing the right thing.
Keeping them inside isn’t the answer.
We need to give them love and protection, but they need freedom and independence as well.
Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist