Within a single generation, our attitude towards children has gone from “go out and don’t come back until it’s dark” to gated children’s playgrounds, chauffeur driven play-dates and a list of officially decreed ‘dangers’ facing children. We have shifted from slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails to iPods, mobile phones and playstations in less than fifty years. You think I’m kidding? There is a DVD compilation of the best of Sesame Street (1969-1974) featuring a warning stating that the DVD is “For adult viewing only”. Why? Because it contains scenes now considered inappropriate for children. We are living in what is undoubtedly the safest time for children in recorded history, yet we protect our kids from germs, grazed knees and broken bones like never before. But what about ‘stranger danger’? Warwick Cairns, a researcher in the UK has calculated that one would have to leave a young child on a pavement for 600,000 years before it became statistically probable that the child would be abducted by a stranger.