Because we will not see our children die, and because they are a part of us that can keep living for a long while, they are, for all practical purposes, immortal. For a species that fears death as much as we do, this is weighty stuff, and it just may be that the stakes of our children s safety are higher for us than for them. In America, children are more likely to make it through childhood than just about anywhere else in the world, so the odds are already very good that our children will live many years after we are gone. When I ve asked parents to list the most serious risks their children face, it s understandable that some say, ''I don t want to think about such things, or ''I can t imagine. The problem is if you cannot imagine something, you also cannot predict it, nor protect against it .
Many people don t have the luxury of deciding to avoid unpleasant thoughts.
There are, for example, help-giving professionals who have no choice but to regularly see terrible things. Difficult though they are, the experiences of those people teach them powerful lessons often instantly. The fireman need pull only one unbelted child out of a gruesome car wreck and he will forever be an advocate of seatbelts.