Last night’s and today’s headlines about the nanny killing those two precious children really affected me. I’m praying for that family today because not only is it the greatest loss, it was the doing of someone they trusted…..and someone their children trusted. I can’t imagine a greater pain. And you know those parents will look back at every. little. thing. and wonder if there was a sign or something they could have done. And the answer is: probably not. This post is about my attempt to protect my daughter from bad things and learning to let go at the same time….and the fine line between the two. It is not a commentary on what could have been done to prevent such a tragedy. The headlines just got me thinking in the shower this morning…..and here’s the jumbled thoughts that resulted:
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I think I’m a pretty laid back parent (I mean I did let my child change her name, right?) If Boo trips and falls I’m not one to make a big deal about it. I let her fail at things so that she can learn from her own mistakes. I try and teach her to do the right thing. One of the hardest things for me recently was to let Boo go out of town for a field trip to the pumpkin patch. I was just getting back from San Francisco and couldn’t go with her. The trip was on a highway….the school bus didn’t have seat belts….I didn’t know the driver. I talked with Boo about it and I think she was more excited about the school bus than the actual field trip. I imagined her disappointment at not having that chance and my decision was made: she rode the bus. A million terrifying scenarios ran through my head about what could happen but I knew I had to let her go. I’d already told her stories about how I rode the bus when I was little…..like how I had a crush on the bus driver because he was a fireman…..and how when kids threw up on the bus he took us to the firehouse and used the fire hose to blast the vomit out the back door. I’d already built the school bus into a grand thing….it would be worse not to let her go…..because it would be a decision based on my fears….not hers.
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When we were renovating our house a few years ago, I was adamant about one thing: the alarm system. When I was a kid, we had a panic button in each room of the house (I used to tell my friends that was why my parents bought the house…..not really true…..but it made a good story). So, when our new security was installed, I insisted on multiple alarm key pads….one in every section of the house…..and I wanted the alarm system to announce exactly which door opened. Anyone new who enters the house kind of does a double take because while it says “FAULT – BACK DOOR“…..it distinctly sounds like “F*CK THAT DOOR“…..the lady in the alarm cloud doesn’t enunciate very well. I mainly wanted this feature on our door because if the alarm system goes off in the middle of the night, I would like to know WHICH door or window was breached without having to send Mr. LBB through the entire house with a baseball bat (that NEVER ends well if you’ve watched Lifetime Movie Network for any length of time). [Read more…]
