Danger!(?)

I've entered a new stage of parenting, which I think of loosely as "the danger age." Not that my children are in any imminent danger, but as they grow more independent of me and my husband and begin to pursue their own interests, they will come in contact with more danger. Or, I should say, potential danger.

The picture above is case-in-point. Manny looks down on his brother, who is playing outside by himself. Yes, at age three-and-a-half, in the big city, while I'm two storeys away. While this winter hasn't been as rough as I had anticipated that it might be, veritably trapped inside because we've got a newborn and a borderline asthmatic (not to mention the thirty minutes of bundling that stand between indoor and outdoor play here in the Midwest), it has still been long and, well, less than spectacular. (Really, though, it could've been much worse, I realize that!) Two young boys' energy threatening to explode the walls of a city apartment have made me thankful for any moments that shift that energy to another location. Because he's now nearing four and is much more capable of imaginative play (not to mention that he's become fascinated with eating snow), Jonah has come to love playing outside in the snow; he rarely wants to come inside. Manny, on the other hand, often doesn't care to play outside, which not infrequently presents me with a dilemma: Force Manny to play outside? (And what about Iohan?) Forbid Jonah to go out? My solution has been to send Jonah outside all by himself.

Coming to this point has actually been somewhat difficult. If you'd told me at the beginning of the winter that soon I'd be letting Jonah play outside with only intermittent attention, I don't know that I'd have believed you. We live in one of the nations's largest cities, where we only minimally know our neighbors and where it seems that there's an overwhelming concentration of weirdos. We live close to the intersection of a major east-west street and a busy sidestreet. While neither of my boys shows much inclination to wander, the urge could strike at any moment; very few of our neighbors would know where this random child on the sidewalk belongs. I know all of this, and the possibility of just one of these things "happening"... well, it makes me break into a sweat to even let my mind start in that direction.

At the same time, I consider other "things that could happen": Any car ride could result in a car accident, perhaps fatal. There are weirdos on the buses and trains all the time, not to mention random gun violence. While standing two feet away from me, my children could suddenly decide that the street or the tracks look like a fun place to play, or they might lean out a little too far while checking to see if the bus or train is on its way. Our own home is potentially dangerous; I've seen statistics before about how often kids are injured in their own homes in those few seconds that parents turn their backs, and they are frightening.

"The danger age" has now begun, and with it begins the weighing of "what could happen" with what my kids will gain from having some freedom (and, frankly, what I will gain from having a break). As I said above, Jonah shows no propensity to wander, and we live in one of the safest and more well-to-do neigborhoods in the city, right by a church and a school. He loves to play outside and he's proud of what he can accomplish by himself, digging in the snow or rolling snowballs. I've given Jonah the age-appropriate rules of safety and "stranger danger": Don't leave the yard; talking to a neighbor is fine, but don't go by the gate; never leave the yard with anybody besides Mama; and scream, scream, scream if anyone tries to take you (though I wonder if this last one is too scare-inducing).

In conversation with my husband, I've come to realize that I tend to assume that danger is not present unless I see actual signs of it. There is certainly a risk of becoming too lax in this view, and I've realized that I need to temper it with appropriate caution. At the same time, I can't bring myself (nor do I desire) to see danger around every corner, or to assume that my kids will be hurt or injured as soon as I look the other way. Living for two decades with a fairly adventurous father has given me a more exploratory, try-it-and-see, do-it-yourself mentality than seems prevalent in today's near-hysterical parenting world (at least the one that the media presents). I can't keep my children small forever; I can't be with them every moment of every day; I want to give them the tools and the experience to do things by and for themselves. Don't think, though, that I don't say a prayer every time I drop Jonah off in the back yard and head back up the stairs.

(Incidentally, when summer arrives, there is no way that I will leave the kids alone in the backyard with their kiddie pool. I'm far more scared of 3 inches of water than I am some alone time in a snowy yard.)