American Fears..or Why Nance is the Oddball February 20, 2008
Posted by spacemom in : Kids , 5 commentsOne of the nice things about friends is that you can talk about almost anything and be comfortable. The weekend in Florida was a great example of this.
I was raised by two wonderful, and paranoid, parents. I learned how to be afraid of everything. Strangers, germs, dogs, water, falling, you name it, I was afraid. So when I met Jay, I went through a great deal of unlearning. It was hard and different, but I have changed a great deal over the past 15 years.
Jay and I have some differing views on childrearing. He and I both agree with some basics; respecting the child as a person, no hitting (as opposed to physical punishment because we have had to hold Luna’s hands before so she didn’t hit her sister, or me), having the family work together instead of a child or parent driven schedule, the eat dirt theory…
We let the kids do a lot. We have 5 second rule, even though I KNOW that this is false and that most germs get on a piece of food within oh, 1 second. Yes, someone did research on this…However, we decided that the kids will be exposed to some germs and that developing a strong immune system is important. We do vaccinate. We decided on public schooling (see Omegamom for some homeschooling discussions.) I am not opposed to homeschooling. It’s just not for us.
During the weekend, we discussed the big fear of American Parents…Child abduction. That weekend, the Friday, a 10 year old boy in Belmont Mass was almost abducted. He started yelling "this is not my parent" loudly. The man ran. I give that kid a ton of credit for keeping his cool and yelling something that would scare away an abductor and a real parent would be able to deal with.
It made me bring up the question of "when would you allow your child go to a public restroom alone?". Soleil will be 6 in July. She’s 5 and a half right now. Shortly after she turned 5, she started to ask to go to the restroom alone. We allowed it at Friendly’s, a local Ice cream restaurant, where we could see the restrooms. If she was taking too long, I would check on her. Don’t get me wrong, I have my paranoid fantasies of abductions and other unspeakables. I try to teach her what to do if a stranger or someone she knows tried to force her to do something.
I discovered that most of the parents at this get together would wait until their children were about 8 before letting them go to a restaurant bathroom alone (or Disney…that was the bigger example). I know that I am lucky because I have girls. I can take them to restrooms myself as old as I want because there’s no same sex issues. Also, Jay has discovered that he can send the two of them into a restroom and ask the women going in, coming out how they are doing. Women are generally good about this.
We also moved the girls into boosters around 3. This is earlier than most people that I hang with. Basically, I’ve looked at the stats and we’ve balanced the safety factor vs the independence factor. Soleil can seat belt herself in. Luna, not yet, but we are working on it. The boosters work well for them. We do know what CAN happen in a car accident. And we have made our decisions.
I think we’ve discovered that Americans take the worst case and imagine that it can happen to them. From there, decisions are made. For Jay and I, we take the statistical approach of how likely is the worst case to happen, weigh in other factors and then make our decision. I know it puts us in an oddball case. I am sure one day, it will bite us, like when Soleil burned her butt because I let her stand closer to the fireplace than most parents would. On the whole, however, this fits in with our view that kids are not kids one day and adults the next. Our society tens to treat children that way. Teens are treated like children and not as young adults. We don’t give the teens the ability to try out their independence. Instead we enforce strict rules on them and then suddenly turn them lose at 18 or 21.
And this is why I am the oddball. The person out of place. I try hard to balance the fears I have (and believe me, I have them!) versus putting these fears on my kids. But my friends don’t make me feel terrible for feeling the way I do.
What do you do? How do you balance your fears with reality?
