This summer, on holidays again near Omey Island, in Co Galway, I discovered that while standing on the strand you can just about hear the waves breaking on the far side of the island. A muted, faraway sound, very different to experiencing the force of the waves close at hand, writes Breda O'Brien
For my children, on holidays in a television-free zone, the events in Soham were experienced just like that - as muted and far away.
It made me wonder about the power of the media to amplify events, to generate fears which our children can do without. As an adult, turning on the radio regularly and scanning the papers for any developments, my imagination more than supplied the gaps left by the lack of moving pictures and endless interviews with witnesses, friends, clergy, and teachers. But the absence of television allowed my small children one more innocent summer.
We answered their questions as they arose, and watched, perhaps too closely, for any signs that they were disturbed. But the fate of a one-clawed crab briefly diverted into a complicated system of child-made sand pools concerned them more deeply, and I am glad about that. Time enough to realise that the world is full of more horrors than their mother, for one, knows how to deal with. Not that I am in favour of sheltering children from unpleasant realities. They were all there for the death of a much-beloved grandma, and a year later for the funeral of their little cousin Lucy, miscarried at seventeen weeks.
My little girl was upset by the tiny coffin, just fourteen inches long, and was clingy for a few days. But I see a profound difference between experiencing such events within your family, and being subjected to an endless diet of speculation, of spurious intimacy with the tragedies of others.
We prayed for the girls and their families. We did not pretend that it was not happening. But I was thankful every day that the shadow of grief which was cast over an otherwise perfect holiday for me, was not there for them.
The burden was where it belonged, on the shoulders of adults. English cousins were escorted the short distance up the road to our house who would have run laughing up alone in previous summers.
It is up to adults to balance commonsense precautions with the need to keep children from becoming fearful and almost crippled. Horrors existed in my childhood, too. But they were not shoved in our faces hour after hour, day after day. What are we doing when we infect our children with adult fear? Last year, as a family, we had a pleasant chat with an elderly couple at a local beauty spot, and they insisted on giving the children orange and biscuits.
I did not know whether to laugh or cry when my seven-year-old informed me later that he had taken their registration number. "Call me paranoid if you like, but I consider it very suspicious behaviour," he said airily. When I tried to point out to him that they were just a kindly couple who had made no attempt to separate the children from us or do anything remotely harmful, he just shrugged and said, "You can't be too careful".
He's not often wrong, but he is about this. You can be too careful. You can live life in a suspicious manner, imputing sleazy motives to innocent behaviour, and curtailing activities which are important developments in a child's life. You can allow fear to dominate normal activities, and wrap children in cotton wool. It is up to adults to find balance.
I was impressed by psychologist Marie Murray's suggestion on radio during the week that adults should no longer ask children for directions. It is an example of how changing adult norms of behaviour can prevent putting a child into a potentially dangerous situation. If all adults choose not to approach children in this way, it makes it more difficult for those with evil intentions to access children. This is a sensible suggestion, although it is sad that it has to be made.
Yet we must keep a sense of proportion. Does the endless media rehearsal of tragedy benefit anyone? Does it benefit the families, worn out from grief, and forced to share it with us? Does it make children more safe, or does it make us more paranoid, more likely to taint all our children's activities with fear?
There is a sensible level of precaution, which friendly and open children in particular need reminding about, but the reality remains that child abduction is rare. Yet incessant media repetition distorts our sense of real dangers for children. The death of children in road accidents is far more common than abduction, yet every day I see unsecured children in cars.
People who adore their children and make major sacrifices for them carry their children on their laps in the front seat of cars, where any need to jam on the brakes will result in injury or even death. The same parents would not dream of letting their child go to the shops alone. There is another danger in the constant media amplification of horror. Take the media trumpeting about the availability of child pornography on the Internet. How many people have been tempted to see just how bad it is, and thereby become complicit in the crime of child abuse by accessing the material?
Does the constant emphasis on deviance encourage those who are already contemplating crime to take the first step?
This is not a case of blaming the messenger. The media, and in particular television, are not just messengers or neutral reflectors of reality. Their presence at a scene of tragedy, and the role they play in bringing every gory detail to us, makes them not just bystanders but participants.
The pervasiveness of media coverage of tragedy, which on the one hand bewails the damage done to innocent children, does damage to thousands of other children whose childhoods are shortened by premature exposure to the reality of evil.
As adults, perhaps one of the services we can carry out for our young children is to decide to turn off the barrage which tells them constantly that the world is a fearful and dangerous place.