Posted by Jim at April 16th, 2005

If you’ve been alive long, you’ve had these moments. You know which ones I mean. The moments where you’re walking along, living your life and something happens and everything changes. It could be an accident. It could be hearing about a loved one’s death. It could be anything.

Far too much of parenthood consists of avoiding these moments or teaching your children to avoid them.

It’s far this reason that I don’t much like parking lots or crossing busy streets. Here I’ve got to do two things simultaneously:

1. Keep the kids safe. This is more of a challenge now that not only can Abby and Rebecca walk, but they can also run. They don’t necessarily want to have their hands held and they definitely don’t want to be carried into the store. They’re also getting heavy enough that I don’t really want to carry them.

2. Teach the kids how to safely navigate such things by themselves. This means injecting a healthy fear of cars into them as in, “Walk, don’t run in the parking lot. Look both ways for cars because they aren’t looking for you.” At the same time, I don’t want to inject too much fear as I’ve noticed that sometimes Abby sees a car and bolts forward, not necessarily looking where she’s going. That’s the exact opposite of what I’m trying for.

As far in the future as it seems now, I’m someday going to have to trust them to cross streets by themselves. In some ways I’ll be happy when that happens, but what new worries will I have to replace the old? It’s a natural process, an inevitable one, and, overall, a good one.

But we’re not there yet, and, we won’t be for a while.