|
It would also depend on how young the youngest child is. You
wouldn't leave a 10-year-old with a 1-year old. That's just asking
for trouble. Maturity is also a factor. My 12-year-old daughter is
infinitely more mature than my 13-year-old son, but he was mature
enough to handle himself for a short while, I thought.
It began when my 8-year-old lost his shoe. Don't ask me how
things like that disappear. It's not like he hasn't worn them in a
long time. He wears them every day. He needed shoes for school the
next day, though, so this was a critical situation.
Where I live it takes 15 minutes to get to a shoe store.
My son and daughter were busily engaged in some activity that did
not include a TV screen, and that is something I like to encourage.
If they had been watching TV, I would have, no doubt, made them come
with me. Rather than ask them to stop what they were doing, I
calculated how long it would take me to get shoes for the youngest:
15 minutes there, 15 minutes back and 15 minutes to locate an
appropriate pair of shoes.
Hmm. What could happen in 45 minutes, I thought, as if time had
anything to do with it. I guess we think that if one crisis happened
on any given day, then the longer you are away, the higher the
likelihood that the crisis will happen when you are gone. There are
24 hours in a day. I would be gone 45 minutes. No court in the land
could convict me of neglect… unless, of course, the crisis actually
happened in those 45 minutes.
I believed they were safe, however, because the crisis of the day
had already occurred with the missing shoes. I left them with my
cell phone number, a list of 600 backups and a warning to behave
themselves. My 8-year-old and I left together to get his shoes.
I received a frantic call while on my way back home. My son
whispered into the phone, "Mom, I think there is a burglar trying to
get into the house!"
My first thought was panic, of course. "Where are you?"
[to top of second column] |
"In the basement. I locked all the doors."
"OK, you guys stay in the basement. I'm coming!"
"In the basement. I locked all the doors."
"OK, you guys stay in the basement. I'm coming!"
I floored it and prayed that there would be no radar traps
between me and my house. I didn't call 911 because a more rational
part of my brain was thinking that my children could be overreacting
to something and, at the speed I was now going, it would only take
me about 60 seconds to reach my house anyway.
Those were the longest 60 seconds of my life. My imagination was
in overdrive. I thought of all the things I could use to defend
myself and my kids if there was a stranger in my house. The arsenal
of weapons in the car with me included my ice scraper, an umbrella,
a pair of headphones and a fingernail clipper. I imagined the
disbelief on his face after I burst in brandishing my ice scraper.
On second thought, I don't think he'd be suitably cowed.
I vowed to use the car as a weapon if I had to. OK, not rational.
The car doesn't fit through my front door, and if the guy was
outside running away, there would be no need to run him over.
Much to my surprise, when I pulled in the driveway, my daughter
was sitting on the front porch petting our cat. The situation didn't
look too terribly dire, I thought. I asked her where her brother
was.
"I don't know. He locked me out of the house, and I've been
trying to get back in the whole time you were gone!"
[By LAURA SNYDER]
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist,
author and speaker. You can reach her at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more info. |
