Safe In Your Arms

We briefly touched on this issue in “Miss Independent.” Rounding out our list of the top 10 parental skill areas is safety.

Frankly, I can’t believe this is at the bottom of the list, after religion and life skills and health. Does it matter how well our kids eat or exercise or whether they go to church if they’re gone?

Safety is a huge issue for parents in today’s world. Not that it wasn’t years ago, but there is such significant media focus on this now that worries about our kids’ safety are almost always in our minds to one degree or another. I asked readers to think about this not only as a separate issue, but also as it relates to cultivating independence in children.

In this world of Amber Alerts, tragic deaths of children, and sensational trials, how do we reconcile our desire to trust our kids’ independence with our mistrust of the world around us?

April 2010

Back in the Dark Ages when I was a kid, life seemed pretty easygoing and free. I spent long summer days with friends, often without adult supervision, and with minimal trouble.

Don’t get me wrong, I always had to ask permission to go anywhere. My parents were very vigilant. They had to know what was going on and who would be there and when I would be home. If they didn’t like the duration of the visit, they would give me a strict required return time. They had to know or at least have met the other kids’ parents. They preferred that we were in public places, like the neighborhood pool or on the playground.

That said, sometimes I would be gone almost all day, riding my bike on the trails in our neighborhood, playing in friends’ yards, etc. I usually didn’t have to check in and I can’t recall my parents ever checking up on me. There were no cell phones then so they could reach me anywhere, anytime. I often wandered around the neighborhood with friends, rode my bike to the pool with my brother, and walked to my bus stop without adult supervision. Would I be willing to let Anna do those things now?

I don’t know…I think I would have a lot of reservations.

On the one hand, you don’t want to stifle your kids and inhibit their ability to have the childhood fun all kids deserve. On the other, you don’t want to make a decision you’ll regret for the rest of your life in the name of promoting their autonomy.

It’s also been hard to figure out when and how to talk to them about “stranger danger.” Anna is so friendly and she loves watching people and talking to them. I remember realizing that when we were shopping in Wal-Mart one day and she turned to someone next to us and said, “Look, it’s Elmo!” as she proudly held up an Elmo that she had conned me into buying. She then proceeded to tell the woman all about Elmo.

Spring 2009

I don’t want to shatter the illusion just yet that not every grown-up cares about Elmo as much as she does…and that if they did, I might worry! It’s been even harder to decide how to convey that some people may want to do harm because Anna thinks everyone is nice. I don’t want to scare her too much – but a healthy level of fear is necessary too.

The subject of strangers recently came up when we were reading “Little Red Riding Hood” (see the post “Once Upon a Time”) because the title damsel in distress forgets that her mom told her not to talk to strangers. I think Anna is smart enough to know that not everyone who disobeys their parents gets attacked by a wolf, but she did ask me what a stranger was.

I explained that strangers are people we don’t know, and added that a lot of people are nice but that she shouldn’t talk to them unless a grown-up was with her and said it was okay. And I left it at that…

…until a week or two later when she was behaving like an absolute terror inside a store, running away from me and trying to hide. I quickly caught her and told her she couldn’t run away from me like that in a store, or anywhere else, for that matter. I had gone over this before and, until this particular occasion, she hadn’t tried to play hide and seek in this way.

So, I felt forced to tell her why that could be dangerous. In essence, I said that most people in this world are nice, but there are some who are not, who might try to hurt kids. I said that those people might want to take kids away from their parents and do bad things and I didn’t want that to happen to her. Then I instructed her to always stay with me in public places and never to follow or get into a car with someone she didn’t know. I have also started telling her when we encounter a serious topic like this that I’m not playing, I’m serious, and it’s important for her to do what I’m telling her to do.

Anna was appropriately freaked out. I felt bad for discussing this with her on the fly rather than waiting for a time when I could think about what to say and I wasn’t upset, but you know the saying about the best laid plans…. and she stayed with me the rest of the time.

That night at bedtime, she clung to me a little more tightly than usual and mentioned that she didn’t want any stranger to get her. I second-guessed whether I should have told her what I did. But I haven’t heard anything about it since, so hopefully it wasn’t too traumatic. Sometimes you don’t know if you’re handling things properly, but you do the best you can, right?

The challenge for me as the years go on will be finding the appropriate balance between being careful and encouraging independence. I don’t know yet where that line will be. What are your ideas?

Do you agree with the ranking of safety at the bottom of this list? As I mentioned, I don’t, although I don’t know exactly where I’d put it. There are many important things on this list, but when it comes down to it, I don’t think anything is as important to me as keeping my baby safe.

June 2009