09-29-99 Eastern Echo

Teaching Fear

As I sat in Arby's with my children one day last week, an elderly man, his wife and their grandson sat down at the table behind us. The man held in his hand a red balloon, which he tied to his grandson's wrist. My youngest turned around and watched the boy play joyfully with the helium balloon, waiting for his grandmother to set out his food. The man and I exchanged nods, acknowledging each other in the way those who share a common experience often do. Each of us managing small children that day made the man and I compatriots, in a way. The man saw Parker looking wistfully at the bobbing red balloon, and he shuffled away around the corner. The wife/grandmother looked up, mystified at her husband's sudden disappearance. We went back to our lunch, as I admonished Parker to turn around and eat his sandwich. Suddenly the man stood at the end of our table with a balloon. His wrinkled hand held out the string to Parker, his eyes crinkled at the corners in a big smile. "Here you go son, a balloon for you too." Parker of course did not immediately reach for the balloon; his eyes turned my way asking for permission to accept the unexpected gift. "Go ahead, sweetie. You can take the balloon. Say thank you to the nice man." I smiled my thanks. My son's delighted smile mirrored the old man's. "I know I should have probably asked your permission before giving your son the balloon," he said. "It's terrible we have to make our children fear strangers to keep them safe these days." It's true. To protect my children from that small percentage of individuals who prey on the innocence of youth, I, by neccessity, must make them suspicious of all strangers. From the time they were very young I have drilled them on how to handle situations I hope they will never experience. If a stranger approaches you in a park, asking for help to find a pet, run immediately and find me or another grown-up you are with and tell them what has happened. If you get separated from me at a department store, go directly to someone who works there and ask for help. If someone stops a car in front of our house and wants help with directions do not go near the car, come and get me right away. If someone actually grabs you, in any of these situations, you must fight, and scream, and make sure everyone around you knows it is a stranger who has you and not your parent. It's enough to give them nightmares. But my nightmare is that they will not know what to do if any of these things happen to them, because an unprepared child can quickly become a victim. Our society has broken down. Community has gone the way of stay-at-home mothers-few and far between. When First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote the book, "It Takes a Village" we all applauded her insights, though we've heard it all before, and for the most part see the logic in her argument that community is a necessity for raising children properly. And yet with the structure of our society today, we cannot possibly go back to that simpler time when our neighborhoods were monitored by a corp of stay-at-home mothers. Back to the time when we knew (as children) that an account of our unseemly behavior would eventually find its way to your own mother's ear and then there would be hell to pay. It kept us straight. We walked carefully knowing every mother knew our own, and that it was likely-no, it was inevitable, that our misbehavior would come to light the next time these guardians of the neighborhood should meet. What do we have today? In the neighborhood I live in, I would guess that 70 to 80 percent of the women work full time. Another percentage, perhaps an additional10 percent, work part-time. We see nannies walking around the neighborhood with children in strollers almost as often as mothers and fathers. Community has often been based on, and nurtured by, the women who dedicated their life to caring for their home and children. We will never go back to that. Too much ground has been won in the war for equality to allow women to make that sacrifice. Personally, I couldn't do it. I'm a full-time student who packs all of my classes into two days a week, so I don't have to surrender my children to others every day of the workweek. But I don't think I'd want to give up that bit of autonomy that comes with having a life outside of my family existence. Change has come, and although I regret the loss of community that gave my younger self a feeling of security, I know that for the most part I'm happy with the progress women have made in the fight for equality. Great strides in equality, great deterioration in community. Meanwhile, I teach my children to fear. There will likely be no eyes watching from the house next door or across the street should my children find themselves face to face with the nightmare scenarios that we rehearse repeatedly. I cannot hold their hand every minute of every day. Trust is a valuable commodity that I can't afford to allow my children to have. So if you see me walking on campus with one of my children and you stop to say hello, don't expect my child to be gregarious and talkative. You see, they have taken to heart the lesson of "Don't talk to strangers." It has been given to them along with their mother's milk. Sad, I know. But my first priority will always be to keep them safe. And if I have to drill them on ways to handle unimaginable situations until they're 22 years old, I will. Because that's what a mother must do these days to keep her children safe.