One day when my son was three, we were going to a park near our house in Seattle, where

we occasionally went for him to play.

It was a pretty typical afternoon for Karen Cook and her young son, playing on the swing

set, going down the slide, just having fun together.

But then...

We were walking around and heading to one section of the park that had more trees.

It was a little bit darker.

And I said to my son, I think we need to turn around and go home now.

And he said, why?

And I said, well, I think there's a stranger over there.

Karen had taught her son to be wary of strangers.

But she had never described to him exactly what a stranger looks like.

We turned around and started walking away and he said, wait, mom, can I just see the

stranger?

I want to see what a stranger is.

And so we stopped so that he could see that it was a person.

I realized at the time that he had no clue what a stranger was.

And it could have been an alien as far as he was concerned.

That moment at the park made Karen rethink why she trusts certain people and not others.

Why did she assume that stranger was a threat?

What about them made her distrustful?

And what lessons was she teaching her son?

...