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KIDS AND FIRE
Broadcast starting week of August 23, 2006

This week on The Infinite Mind, kids are often fascinated with fire, but how do you know when childish curiosity is crossing the line into problem behavior? Children playing with fire each year cause the deaths of hundreds of people and inflict hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. In fact, over half of all people arrested for arson are juveniles. Guest host Michelle Trudeau explores children’s sometimes deadly attraction to fire, and some innovative ways that psychologists are working to keep them safe.

To start the program, guest host Michelle Trudeau looks at the numbers, and as far as kids and fires go, the numbers are at once surprising and disheartening. According to the FBI, over half of those charged with arson are juveniles, and in the most recent data available, kids started a reported 67,490 fires in just one year, fires that caused 232 deaths, more than 1,800 injuries, and almost a quarter of a billion dollars in property damage. What is the story behind kids and fire?

Next a personal story from a former child fire setter and his mother. Benji was four years old when his mother fist noticed his fascination with fire, a few years later it nearly took his life. We hear how Benji's mother sought to help her son realize the dangerous consequences of his actions.

Michelle Trudeau interviews Dr. David Wilcox, a child psychologist and lecturer at Harvard University who works for the Middlesex County Office for Juvenile Justice and Prevention in Massachusetts. As a therapist, he has treated some 2,000 juvenile firestarters over the past 15 years. Among his findings: kids who start fires are often moved by curiosity. Where open flame was once a commonplace in every household, neither children nor adults these days have much real-life experience of fire in their daily lives. Parents also contribute to the problem by not being careful at storing matches and lighters and by often not paying appropriate attention to their children.

We hear from Sean McEvoy, he was just 15 when he set a fire that nearly destroyed his high school in Livington County Michigan, he tells his story.

Michelle Trudeau then speaks with writer and literature professor Eva Thury from Drexel University in Philadelphia. Thury, co-author of the Introduction to Mythology (Oxford University Press), explains the prevalence of fire in creation myths from around the world. According to these stories, fire, since before the birth of time, has been both a blessing and a curse. Dr. Thury also makes note of J.K. Rowling's use of fire in the latest installment of the Harry Potter series. Our simultaneous feelings of comfort and anxiety when confronted with fire may be thousands of years old, but they remain true even in the present day.

Storyteller and children's book writer Laura Simms offers two stories of fire -- one from Lappland, the other from Argentina. The one speaks of a stag, who stole fire for the whole world; the other tells the tale of Ovenbird, an irrepressible creature who caused a woeful of trouble with his laughter.

And commentary by John Hockenberry.

 

Heard this week on The Infinite Mind:

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