free range car wash

Yesterday at the car wash I saw the most darling little baby.  While I normally don’t do this kind of thing, my momma-to-be-ness just overcame me and I cooed over her strawberry outfit and asked the man standing beside her car seat, rocking it with his foot, how old she was. 

“Five months,” he replied, beaming. 

“Oh, so exciting!” I gushed, as if just the very being of five months was celebratory.  I rubbed my stomach proudly, in case he hadn’t noticed the roundness.  “I’m due with a little girl in the fall.”

He eyed me up and down and then said, “Six months?” as a guess.  “Seven,” I replied politely, acting as if it wasn’t at all unusual for a strange man to squint and cock his head in judgment of my middle.

I gave some pleasant closing remark about how darling his daughter was, and walked away.  He in turn yelled down the hallway to tell my husband to “make sure and keep his eyes open.”  I laughed appropriately, having no idea what he meant.

A few minutes later the man and the cute baby in the car seat appeared beside me on the bench where I had plopped with my book.  He obviously wanted to chat, or at least have me sing more praises to his baby’s beauty, so I acquiesced and closed my book. 

“Free Range Kids,” he read the title aloud.  “I saw that at the bookstore.  Is it about what to expect?”

No, not really.  Unless you count Extremely Crazy Other Parents as something to expect.  I didn’t say that, but I did launch into a brief description of the book and the basic premise that somewhere along the way parents have gone from, “Have fun, be home before dark,” to “Stay in my sight at all times, with a helmet and knee pads on, and don’t talk to anyone.”

I concluded with a basic tsk, tsk, and “The crime rate, even the child abduction rate, hasn’t changed in fifty years.  But now we’re all just so crazy.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “It’s a different world.  People didn’t used to be as violent or predatory as they are now.”

Oh, he hadn’t heard me.  Maybe he was mesmerized by the red strawberries on his unbelievably cute daughter’s getup.

“No, that’s just what I’m saying, it’s not a different world.  It’s just that now we hear in excruciating detail about every single violent act.  I don’t think such  child-related tragedies used to be exploited in the news.  The masses weren’t eager for every gory minutia of a crime on a 24 hour news cycle.”

“Well, what about that 17-year-old girl who just got murdered down the street here,” he countered, citing a Los Angeles crime I didn’t know about.  I’m not sure a 17-year-old counts as a “child abduction,” but I wasn’t going to try and convince the man about the safety of Los Angeles.  Even I couldn’t totally swallow that one.

We went on to discuss a little of this and that, he was from Missouri, so close to my home state of Oklahoma.  He was a stay-at-home dad, and we had the same model car being washed.

I was just musing in my head that maybe I should get his information.  I mean, The Gorilla and I don’t have many friends in LA with children, and this guy was obviously educated and friendly with a precious daughter.  Considering we met some of our favorite friends on an airplane, meeting at the neighborhood car wash didn’t seem that strange.

And then he started telling me about the baby that lived down the street and had an “unhealthy attachment to her live-in nanny.”  Sigh.  Her parents were “missing out on everything because they both worked.”  My eyes averted.

I have enough judgment in my life.  I don’t wish to invite more.  Especially since he was really shaping up to be the parent who X-rays Halloween candy for razor blades. 

(Did you know there has never been one reported case of Halloween candy poisoned by a stranger?  Not one.  Read Free Range Kids.  It’s good.)

**

I haven't completely finished it yet, but Free Range kids was recommended by my friend Megan of SortaCrunchy and the book is connecting with me.

My parents believed in the Free-Range philosophy, though at the time it was just called "trusting."  Both of my parents believe that children can and will live up to the expectations set for them.  I had all kinds of freedom when I was growing up.  I was expected to behave, and I did.  I know it's oversimplifying, but it's the truth. 

The author of Free Range Kids, Lenore Skenazy, caught a lot of flack last year when she allowed her nine-year-old son to find his way home from Bloomingdales in New York City.  His trek - which he asked to take, and was taken in his home city - involved the use of the subway and a bus.  He made his journey and was proud of himself.  When Ms. Skenazy wrote a column about it for the New York Sun, she found herself labeled all over the media circuit as "America's Worst Mom."  

I like her writing style, I like her argument.  I am curious to see how this plays out in real life with Baby Girl.  But now I'm more aware of the constant fear in so many parent's eyes, and how much of it is unjustified.  Not all of it, mind you, but a lot of it.

And so the man at the car wash and I are not going to start a playgroup.  That's okay.  But I really should have asked where they got that strawberry jumper. 

Car Wash photo by VirtualErn via flickr.

Comments

[jaime]

I love the way you tell this story of your car wash encounter, and I can't wait to read Free Range Kids.

[Lisa]

Don't know why I haven't read this book, will go put it in my library pile now.. Love this story!!!! Crazy how nuts the media has made everyone, huh??

[Jedediah]

Laura, Good story I love the part about your parents "trusting" you. I was raised the same way, of coarse it was in a small town not N.Y.C. In my life the kids I was raised with that had super over protective parents we're always the ones to rebel at one point and do all those things their parents told them not to.

[Sara]

Hey there. I found your blog via SortaCrunchy and I love it! Thanks for the book review of sorts. I can't wait to read it! Oh, and if you ever get desperate, I have great friends and family in L.A. that have young kiddos. :)

[Liz]

Hmmm, I think I will have to read this book, just might upload it onto the Kindle tonight. I can't lie, I might be somewhat like this guy from the car wash, I try not to be, but it is difficult for me to not keep a close eye on my children.

As you know, I have four kids, and obviously there isn't enough time in the day for me to worry about each and every possible scenario that could happen to them. But I can say, being only a year away from my oldest son entering teenhood is kind of freaking me out just a little....

[Summer]

I just finished reading that book and loved it. :) I've got three kids and I'm trying to get over the "OMG my baby is going to die!!!" fear that's instilled in us today. Crazy parents seem to be more scary than the boogie man we keep hearing about. Congrats on the coming bundle!

(p.s. I'm an Okie too, congrats on getting out of the state. LOL)

[Megan@SortaCrunchy]

I can't wait until you have finished reading so we can discuss.

And you'll find a tribe! No worries. I know you will.

[Kelly]

Is this your first baby? Because if so, you are so awesome and ahead of the curve. So many new parents are so very controlling and protective. It's probably a "natural" response or whatever, but that doesn't make it any less annoying or - if it goes unexamined through the children's lives - potentially harmful.

I have been so gradually ramping up to a Free Range Kid mindset but Lenore's site finally tipped the scale for me and now we're full-blown and loving it. My family is benefiting in so many ways and I'm so glad to have found this tribe of smart, funny, and free-living parents.

As for the car wash dad. We have had a stay-at-home parent in the household since we had kids. BUT. Judging other parents who don't and deciding what's "healthy" for their kids? Who knows, he could be right in this case. But if invoked regularly or a deep-seated way of thinking, that kind of other-judgment (as opposed to discernment of needs within your own family, yourself, your partner) sure causes a lot of suffering.

[mom]

I'm sure glad I'm not raising kids today. I raised mine "free-range" (but didn't know the right word to use), just the way I was raised and the way their dad was raised. He was raised in the country, I was raised in Oklahoma City, my kids were raised in a small town. We were taught the perils of the environment we lived in. My parents didn't teach me about rattlesnakes like his did, but they did teach me how to cross the street at a very young age. I think children are way smarter than we often give them credit for.

[Jenny Connolly]

Laura,
You write so well..I love reading your posts.
Jenny Hall Connolly