Stop assuming the worst

4-27-15

Hello, my name is Gena and I am a recovering helicopter parent.

I didn’t plan it when I got pregnant. I always hoped to be one of the chill moms, the ones that could easily drop their kid off with a sitter while I still flitted about, doing my own thing. But I will tell you, for the first 4 years of being a mom, I was anything but chill.

I worried about them in ways I am almost embarrassed to admit. I watched them like a hawk in public and studied parenting manuals as if I was looking to get a doctorate in the subject. I knew every trend, I knew every stepping stone for proper development and I was a force to be reckoned with during this time. I was the crazy mama who cried for hours when she found out daycare gave my older son, Bobby, a banana for the first time because not only did I think it was too early for solid foods, I wanted to be the one to happily watch his first interaction with it.

Despite my early hang-ups, I grew with my boys. Dax, my younger son certainly helped me in a crash course of what I needed to worry about and what I needed to just let go. He was a daredevil from day one and I honestly worried for a while the child services was sure to come get him with how many times he managed to hurt himself. We joked that we had one of those punch cards at the ER and we almost had enough visits to get the next one free. None of these injuries or sickness related visits were life threatening. A fever here, a bump on the noggin there. All of these were simply growing pains and with each incident, I got stronger. I could laugh at many of them. It didn’t mean I was callous to any suffering on the part of my children, but I also recognized it was not my negligence that caused these things.

Bobby is now 10 and Dax is 8. They walk to school by themselves. They have walked to the park by themselves. I have been leaving them at home for periods of time for a couple of years now. They know how to use the phone. They know how to facetime me. They know the names of our neighbors (and not just the ridiculous nicknames I have given them all). These boys are robust. They know the right answers on what to do if there was a fire. We have had long and enlightened conversations about every disaster that might occur. They are well educated on real life, which is something I can’t say about a lot of other kids I have dealt with.

This morning I read yet one more article about situations in which moms were hauled off by the police because they left their child in the car by themselves for 5 minutes. Are you kidding me with this? When you read the details of each account, it is downright appalling how insane the charges brought against these moms are. Endangerment? Really? One mom had left two kids in the car for 10 minutes in mild temperatures, with a phone, locked doors and windows down enough to provide additional air flow. These kids were not left in a war zone. They weren’t given explosives or matches or machetes. They were in a parked car, surrounded by busy-bodies. Oh, wait, that is pretty dangerous. Other people, the ones who think they are saving a life by calling the cops are the real danger out there.

I have stepped in only once when I thought another child was in danger. It was when a dad physically threw his son into a lawn chair on the soccer field. Not one other parent stepped in on that day. This child was actually harmed, yet no one did a damn thing. I did. I stepped in as if they had slapped my child. I wasn’t having this kind of behavior around not only my own children, but the boys on the team that I had almost come to think of as my own.

So why is it that this was an acceptable practice? Why is it that one child, being tossed around like a rag doll is an ok thing to do, but allowing a couple of kids to walk to the park negligence? Where is the rationale in all of this? Oh wait, that’s right, there isn’t.

Oh, but it takes a village to raise a child, right? Grownups from this so called “village” are just making sure kids left alone are safe. I will tell you right now, kids alone are often so much safer than the ones with parents who are awful to them. No one steps in when there is actual danger, only perceived issues. It makes our “village” flawed and the real danger.

If you see a child being left in the car, think before you freak out. Look around. Check the surroundings. If you are truly worried because it’s 100 degrees out, perhaps check to see if this is a kid who knows how to open the door to the car. If it looks as though the kid is juggling knives while at the park alone, sure, I think then perhaps you can step in. That being said, see if perhaps the knives are in fact Nerf products. Don’t call 911 simply because you feel that kids need more boundaries. Most of all, talk to other people! If you see a parent who has done something that looks questionable, maybe approach them after the fact and nicely strike up a conversation. I can assure you, if someone came up to me after seeing me leave Bobby in the car this weekend for 3 minutes as I ran in to return the Redbox movie I had, I would love to have a conversation with them. I would love for them to ask my son if he felt like he was in danger. Go ahead, ask him what he would do if someone approached him. Do some research people. Don’t always assume the worst.