Summer is often a time of carefree innocence, of shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops — the least amount of cover possible on the humid days.

But sadly, the world is no longer one of carefree innocence, but rather, one of protection, parental instincts and the perception of threats.

If the province-wide return to classes

hadn’t already begun, we’d swear it was still summer.

But it’s not. School’s in, and we have to educate our children. We have to educate them in ways we never dreamed, such as explaining to them to not reveal personal information over the Internet and how that information, in the wrong hands, might be used to harm them.

The disappearance of Cedrika Provencher, the nine-year-old Trois-Rivieres girl who vanished from an area near her home in late July, has galvanized the province, and is making authorities pay better attention to sex offenders and forcing parents even further into a protective huddle around their children.

Seemingly silly security measures, such as buzzers to admit visitors in elementary schools and required presence of a parent before a kids is allowed to walk home from most schools, now seem prudent, rather than knee-jerk.

Maybe it’s the repugnant thought of someone taking advantage of a child’s innocence and their trusting nature to do them harm, but more and more, parents — surrounded by the media who report such

disappearances with increasing fervor - are more stressed out about potential predators than possibly ever before.

That’s why the Missing Children’s Network, West Island Community Shares, the Montreal police department are all holding different child-identification clinics and providing tips to parents on keeping their kids safe and sound.

We must, as a society, also endeavour, on a larger level, to help educate our children about dangers that lurk in the world, how to think independently and equip them with the information they need to get them through the day.

Isn’t that a parent’s job, at the end of the day: to teach their children about the world so they may go out into it and make something of themselves?

Visit the Missing Children Network’s website, for tips on how to keep the kids aware of dangers around them, or visit Le Vieux Four Manago on St. Charles Blvd. on Sept. 9, where West Island Community Shares will hold child-identification clinic as part of a fundraising spaghetti lunch. Visit your local police station and introduce your child to the constables, or simply meet with your child’s teachers to find out how you can extend safety lessons taught at school to the home as well.

Children are society’s most precious resource. Let’s give them the tools they need to be safe — for the rest of their lives.f