Last fall while friends were visiting from out of town, a neighbor girl came to the door and asked if she could take the kids to the park. All five of them – our three kids, plus our friends’ son and daughter – happily went.
My friend asked incredulously, “Did she just volunteer to take the kids to the park?”
“Yep,” I replied. “She’s awesome.”
And she is, she really is. She genuinely enjoys my kids, and they adore her. Occasionally I’ll ask her to stay with them (and then I pay her well), but more often she simply volunteers. One day her mother even accused her of skipping school to play with my kids.
She doesn’t just park them in front of the TV either. She takes them to the park or to Sonic. She rollerblades with Oliver in the jogging stroller. She and CJ constructed with Bendaroos for hours one morning. When Kyle and I returned from our first triathlon of the season, all three kids were freshly bathed and the bathroom wasn’t even a disaster.
So it should come as no surprise that her family is moving. All good things must come to an end.
When I read about Sandra Cantu’s death, allegedly at the hands of neighbor Melissa Huckaby, I wondered how I know I can trust my own neighbors. My girls walk down the street every day to visit friends. I rely on them to keep me apprised of where they are, but they don’t always remember. Sometimes I get a call or a knock on the door from another neighbor child’s mother or father, asking if their child is at my house. We all look out for each other, just as I imagine Sandra Cantu’s mother felt that she and her own neighbors did.
Conversely, after Tacy and another neighbor girl were targeted by BB gun-wielding boys while walking home from school last year, I felt betrayed by my neighborhood. Wasn’t it supposed to be safe? Weren’t the kids who lived here raised better than that? Where the hell were their parents anyway?
Similarly, when CJ received an incident report at her former preschool claiming that she “exposed herself” when she lifted her dress to show her underwear, I was ashamed – not of my speech-delayed child who truly didn’t understand what she did wrong, but ashamed of myself for entrusting her to caregivers who truly didn’t understand HER.
I’m still trying to forgive myself for what happened to both Tacy and CJ. But I can’t imagine the ultimate feelings of betrayal and shame of parents like Sandra Cantu’s mother: someone she trusted harmed her child. The newest charges against Huckaby – that she drugged another neighbor child in January and a man in March – have undoubtedly multiplied those feelings of betrayal and shame from beyond Cantu’s family to the entire neighborhood. Were I in Sandra’s mother’s position, I don’t know that I’d be able to forgive myself, believing I could have prevented such a tragedy.
Stories like Sandra’s prompt mothers not to trust: to keep their children out of day care and preschool, to hold them back from going to kindergarten, to insist on hosting all guests at their home, to accompany their children to every activity and watch them like a hawk. Knowing how I’d blame myself if anything ever happened to my own kids, I can understand.
Yet I continue to trust. I trust Tacy to walk home safely after school. I trust CJ’s new preschool to care for her with compassion. I trust our babysitters and neighbors and friends to treat my children just as they’d want their own children to be treated. And I trust myself to teach my kids the skills they need to care for themselves, including how and when to trust others.
Where do you allow your kids to go by themselves? How old were you when you began walking places by yourself?
I grew up in a small town, but even with that, there were some creepy people. My parents and I always talked about things, and they made it clear where we couldn’t go, and always told us why. I was 9 when we moved off the farm, certainly old enough to be trusted to do some things on my own. (I walked close to a mile to school, no alleys, always the same route)
M is finally getting to the age when I need to start considering if she can go somewhere with the supervision from a neighbor kid and honestly, I tend to look more at the parents than the kid. If I know the parent spanks or hits, then I have to say I’m less likely to want her to go with those kids. However, my opinion may change as time goes on. A lot of my opinions about those kinds of things came from reactions when she was just a baby. Now she’s a back talking toddler and I think I can trust her more to tell me what is going on. We’ll see though. We can’t be hermits forever, I would like to see a movie eventually.
The ability of a child to articulate both feelings and events – that’s key. It varies widely between children too.
My girls are 11 and 13, I have a hard time letting them go off on their own alone. We live too far to walk to school and we do not have bus service. I drive them each day and see kids walking alone all the time, young ones too! I think the “buddy system” is a definite must in this day and age. I do allow them to do things together or in a group of friends. I never thought I would be a mom who would give my child a cell phone before high school age, but since my girls have gotten older, we now have one that is shared between the two of them for times when they are not with us.
Buddy system – definitely. I walked a mile or so by myself to/from piano lessons and Girl Scouts from the time I was seven. A buddy would have been nice, especially with all the unleashed dogs roaming about.
My daughter is 5, and about three or four months ago I started letting her play with other neighborhood kids on her own without my watching her every single second. We live overseas on a military base, and our house is on a fairly quiet street, so I feel comfortable with this here. At our previous home – back in the US – I would not.
She and I have an understanding that she can play with either of the kids in the houses next door without telling me where she is, but if she wants to cross the street to play with the two little girls living over there she has to ask me first. There’s a playground there, too, and she’s allowed to go on her own as long as one of the moms who live on that side of the street know that they’re there.
I didn’t think I’d ever be comfortable doing that, but I’ve learned to let go a little. I don’t come from a family where this is the norm; I lived 1/4 mile away from the brand new middle school that opened for my 8th grade year, but because there were no sidewalks between the school and my house, my mom arranged for me to ride the bus. I was mortified. Literally – it was 1/4 mile away, and I was 13, and riding the bus. It was particularly awful when I had to stand outside in the cold to wait for an hour-long bus ride at 7:15am when I could have started walking at 8:15, and been there in five minutes.
I always felt my mom was overprotective, and I am, too, to an extent. I still don’t allow my daughter to walk in a parking lot without holding my hand, or my pocket, or my little boy’s stroller. She’ll probably be ten before I let go. But I also don’t want to micromanage her play time, and here, at least, I feel as though it’s safe enough to let her play on her own.
I can only imagine how humiliating your middle school bus riding experience was. That sounds way over the top. But I still hold everybody’s hands in parking lots myself.
Oh, I’m so sorry that your lovely neighbor is moving! Huge bummer.
So far, Mayberry-ness aside, I haven’t let the kids go anywhere by themselves except to the next-door neighbors, and even then I watch them from the door until they get there.
I remember walking to school by myself in 1st grade. I also remember that a man exposed himself to me in an alley near my house (in a super safe small town) when I was 8 or so. But I still continued to walk all over town by myself.
I never knew about the flasher! Yikes.
We lived on a very closely knit cul-de-sac, and I would go over to the neighbors’ house all the time. We’d ride our bikes through the ‘hood, etc. I was probably in early elementary (before I moved overseas).
There are about 5 families on our street that I trust, and I’ve let Quinlan walk up to visit them, but I’m still outside watching, and then I come up eventually. It’s mostly that they’re outside playing and so she goes to see what they’re doing – not necessarily an impromptu playdate.
I think it’s hard for parents because it’s one thing for your kids to know each other, but another to get to know the parents well enough. That’s what I find so difficult about playdates. I know the parents “sort of well” but then what are they letting my kid do at their house when I’m not there. I don’t think that’s helicopter parenting so much as just being responsible for your own kids’ safety.
Needless to say, Q doesn’t play with lots of kids – there’s one girl she loves to play with, and she goes over there maybe once a month (or the little girl comes over here).
I agree that parents are a key factor. I insist on getting to know the parents a bit before playdates, which is a large part of the reason why CJ doesn’t have playdates with her preschool classmates.
When I was in kindergarten, I walked 9 blocks to school every day, by myself, crossing all those streets without incidence. I have recently (like, it’s definitely been less than a year) started letting my kids go to the Target sections they’re interested in without me, while I’m in a nearby section. Sigh. I am a little anxious.
Oh, and the kids I referred to are TEN and EIGHT. Sigh.
I was that girl who is your neighbor. Sorry she’s moving. I loved to babysit and even just play with the younger kids. So I know there are kids out there who just love to babysit and play with younger kids simply because they think it’s fun. I feel very lucky to have a nanny who is in her early 20s and truly seems to love my daughter and playing with her and caring for her. But we had to build that trust with her before just leaving her in our house with our child. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like when our kids are older and we have to start letting them do things by themselves!
Growing up, my suburb neighborhood seemed pretty safe. I know there was a neighborhood watch, which my mom was part of, and she said that there were neighbors she trusted who watched out for us. But we were allowed to roam around quite a bit. We moved when I was 11, but the years prior to that, I could walk down the street to the pool, a few streets over to the store for candy, all around the neighborhood streets to visit with friends. It seems like it was a different world back then. I have no idea how I’ll feel about my own kids roaming around, but I’m already nervous!
I can remember being very small and being allowed to walk with playmates to the local park. Then somebody started killing kids (Google Clifford Olsen for the history. Or don’t, if you don’t want nightmares) in the area and that was the end of free-ranging it for us.
We moved out of the city so that there’d be more opportunities for E and J to run free range, but the truth of it is, I’m nervous and suspicious, and every story about another child abducted or molested or even just harassed by peers makes me reluctant.
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
God I was just thinking about this today as Thalia walked a half a block ahead of me on the street. Growing up I wouldn’t have thought twice of her being even a whole block ahead. But I wonder the degree to which things are actually more dangerous, or whether we just stress over everything these days.
I’d like to think that you (I, we) have better instincts about people than the people who end up in the papers. It’s kind of my one solace.
Great post and thought provoking, heart wrenching questions. The fact is that there is never a guarantee as we see all the time when a case like the Cantu case breaks in the news. The key is that we should always be asking ourselves the questions that you ponder here and use the questions that undoubtedly come up all the time as opportunities to remind us that we need to talk to our kids, educate about safety, that we need to talk to our educators to insure that they are watching out for our kids best interest. By simply, acknowledging the fears and then taking the next steps to think about them, dissect them, and use them as teachable moments —which would ideally turn into age appropriate conversations with our kids, we are one step ahead of the game.