Sandra Cantu Unaware of Danger
By now, if you followed the case you’ve most likely seen the short eight seconds of Sandra Cantu as she skipped innocently along past a video camera. Waving her arms and enjoying the fact that she was alive.
Only minutes later she had disappeared. Gone forever from the world of the living and from her parents. Her mother will never hug her again and her family will never see her smile or hear her voice again.
The thing that struck me in the past few days as I attempted to wrap my reasoning around this event is that Sandra was totally unaware of the danger lurking just outside her world. She wasn’t aware of the 78 registered sex offenders living within a few miles of her home. 78!
And the odd thing is the danger that swooped down on her may not have even been someone we currently know about. It may have been someone she knew and trusted. It could have been someone her mother knew and trusted.
One of the first things I did a week or so ago when she went missing was tell my girls about the danger of not being aware of your surroundings and strangers or strange vehicles that might be nearby.
They were getting ready to ride their bikes over to a friend’s house only a few houses away, but my “parental danger radar” had gone into rotation and I sat them down at the kitchen table and had a short talk with them.
I felt better, but did I feel that they were safer? No, I didn’t…
Just slightly better informed.
The fact is they still have the mental development of a child. A child that has only been alive on this planet for 8 to 10 years and hasn’t had the chance to experience the ugly nature of some people. They still live in a world of trust, innocence, fun and ignorance.
This is a different world than the one that I grew up in. Where neighbors all knew one another and children could roam fairly safe except for the occasional snake or piece of glass. Where doors could be left unlocked in the daytime without fear of someone just waiting to pounce.
It is up to us as parents to educate our children about these dangers, but never forget that theirs is a mind unable to grasp the true meaning, circumstances and importance of the issues. Don’t assume that your words are enough.
Children are one of my special mentoring skills. I have spent three decades learning how they think and reason. You simply MUST reason for them. They have a very limited capacity to comprehend and safety in these issues requires comprehension.
Teens are not much better. Oh, they’re striving for more independence and have improved labeling, meaning knowledge and reasoning, but the brain and reasoning depth doesn’t truly develop until around age 25 or more.
As I see it we must address the issue of community safety from two points:
Better education and awareness of what our children, teens and young adults understand and our own awareness and involvement with the people that live in the community nearby especially those of potential danger.
We must be the eyes and minds for our children and it is time for us to do more than simply say “enough is enough”. In seminars I give people always seem so amazed when I tell them that the education of their children is not important. It is their education that holds the most value.
Until you are aware of and comprehend quality living patterns you simply cannot teach them to your children. Look at most of the violent crimes in the news. Many of them would never have happened if the people involved had been living under a better standard of values and not under poor quality circumstances.
In essence, they put themselves in the line of fire. I’m not saying that Sandra Cantu’s mother lived an improper way, I’m saying the person that committed the crime was the sum of the series of poor living quality education, values, motivations, decisions and actions.
There are times when we could look at the victim and say if only you hadn’t lived like that or frequented that location or been involved with that peer group you wouldn’t be a victim, but Sandra isn’t that person. She was an innocent child in the wrong place at the wrong time with no reasonable adult within helping distance.
Sandra Cantu was unaware of the danger. Don’t allow your children or teens to be.
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