Are we becoming Cynical?

Hey Everyone,
Today I wanted to write about quite a sensitive subject, but it is one that is indeed close to my heart.

Everyday we hear/read stories about children going missing and neglect cases, my question to you is...

"Are we becoming Cynical?"

You are probably thinking right about now... Where's she going with this?!?!

Well I will tell you.

As soon as these stories are released, we go through stages.

Stage 1 - Worry - either for the person in question or for ourselves (what is the world coming to?)

then...

STAGE 2 [Now this is the worst part] - OPINIONS.

Everyone has an opinion on everything, which is fine but around sensitive topics such as child neglect, people are always pointing the finger before they know the story. 

For example, last week a 3 year old boy went missing. What the public were told was... He went to bed and in the morning he was gone.

Well the bells rung in everyones head... STAGE 1 - WORRY - Where is he? I hope he is ok.

then...

STAGE 2 happens. I was in Tesco and I saw several people looking at the little boy's picture and saying "I bet the parents know where he is" or "why does a 3 year old run off in the middle of the night?" or worst yet... "He's probably dead". 

I find this quite bad that people instantly jump to these kinds of opinions and are especially voicing them in the middle of a busy supermarket.

On this occasion it seems they could have been right [as we are still waiting on the judgement call] and that leads me to my next questions...

"Why do we expect the worst? Are we a negative nation or is it just past experiences that make us like this?"

Unfortunately these things do happen around the world, not just in the UK and it does have an impact on our daily lives, maybe not straight away but in time...

When I was growing up, I spent 80% of my time outside, playing with friends, only returning to eat and sleep. My parents always wanted to know

1. Where I was going
2. Who I was with

After providing this information, they would decide whether I was able to go and if I was, a time I had to be home by. 

However, these days, I wouldn't want to let Miley out of the house, never mind the street (if she was old enough to obviously) due to the fear of what COULD happen.

I must say, studying childcare does not help in the over-protective mum zone. I had to study cases such as "Baby P"; "Victoria Climbie" and "James Bulger"

It saddens me to hear that these things do happen in the world and when you hear the negative comments from people it can often make it worse. People being wrongly accused and sometimes the comments end up being the truth. It's hard to break cycles of cynical behaviours especially when the news is made up of 99% negative stories.

However, I really enjoy reading the positive stories, not only about children but about people from all over the world and their accomplishments. So from this... I am going to try and post at least one positive story every week onto my blog.

So in the words of Russel Howard "It's not all DOOM and GLOOM!"

Let me know what you thought of this post in the comments below, I don't usually do posts like this but I've had a pretty reflective day today.

I can't wait to hear your opinions!

See you soon xxx