As a parent, keeping your child safe is your highest priority and with the media filled with news of child abduction and abuse, how safe are our children?

According to Home Office figures there were 532 child abductions in England and Wales between 2011 and 2012. With about 500 children under 16 abducted each year - but the majority of these are parental abductions, according to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop). Has  the world become a darker and more dangerous place or do we simply hear about it more through the media we now have at our fingertips.

There are always those people that will try and lay blame, whether it be at the parents, with the school or with anyone close enough to be considered but ultimately the people that are to blame are those that abduct or abuse these children. The very thought of someone taking my babies makes me feel physically sick and if I could, I would wrap them in cotton wool so nothing or no-one could ever hurt them but I can't do that if I want them to have adventures, to explore, to learn.

Growing up, I was never allowed to "play out", my parents just simply wouldn't allow it and I sulked a lot because of it. I now find it very difficult to let my own daughter do the same. I want her close, where I can see her, where I can hear her chatting, laughing and even crying when she falls over. 

Children will always be children, trusting, innocent and naive if we shield them from life. I was still trusting, innocent and naive well into my teens and sometimes I wonder if that was a good thing or not. I believed that there was good in everyone, you just had to find it. Years later (ahem) I find myself still believing and searching for the good in people but I am no longer naive enough to believe that it lives in everyone.

So tonight, with my thoughts and prayers going out to the family of missing April Jones, I will hold my children a little tighter and kiss them goodnight more times than necessary because they are home with me, safe and for that I am beyond thankful.

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