This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Balancing Real and Perceived Risk

After any incident where children are harmed, or even if there is a perception where they could be harmed, many of us seem to go overboard to "protect out children". How do we balance actual risk with perceived risk?  What actions actually help vs merely make us feel better?

Some national events, like school shootings at Newtown or Columbine, grab our attention, and our hearts. Then there are local events, like a convicted sex offender moving into town. Less drastic, but also causing modest concern in some, are potential "threats" like a state-regulated marijuana dispensary.

Why are we in the suburbs not more concerned with things that are can also affect us or our children, perhaps even more than with the headline-grabbing issues?

  • abuse by a family member or family friend
  • traffic accident, because of speed, lack of curbs, or cell phone use
  • accidental shooting by a licensed gun
  • violent, non-sex offenders
  • bullying by peers
  • a parent suffering from substance abuse
  • domestic issues with non-custodial parents
When I was on the School Committee we stepped up our building security, voting to lock down outside doors, install cameras, practice lockdown procedures, etc. (I even forget what national incident prompted us to do that; it might have been Columbine.) It made us all feel a tad more secure. It is surely good to control who is in our buildings. But did it really matter? All through that, I did not feel my children, nor any in Belmont, were in any significant risk while at school. For most kids there was more risk on the way to school than being at school. And for many being at home on a weekend with relatives posed a far higher risk.

Of course this is a national issue too, beyond concerns for children. I've had Homeland Security (or at least someone in uniform) go through my backpack at a T station. But in this case I did not feel any safer, feeling it was all for show.

Both feeling safe and actually being safe (or at least safer) are important. But, both nationally and locally, we're paying too much attention to perceptions and feel-good safety measures, and the media is not doing its job in this respect. Our time and resources would be far more wisely spent on actual threats, or at least more-likely threats. Like it or not, risk pervades our lives. We should do our homework so we know where we should really be concerned - and where we should not.

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