What A Stranger Told me...

I got told off yesterday by a stranger...

I was paying too much attention to my tablet and not watching my kids on their bicycles as they were at that point about 100 yards up the path.

He told me that I'd better watch my kids rather than bury my nose working on the tablet, as children are more important than whatever it was I might have been doing on there, as someone could easily come and take the children and I wouldn't even know. There are a lot of evil people about, you know.

I would know because they would scream the place down.

But anyway in a way he was right, I put the tablet down, I was literally just doing a task that involved a few clicks, then I was going to stop anyway.

I have thought the same thing in parks particularly, as I have seen mothers buried in their phones while their 2-year-old hang perilously off climbing frames or falling over, blood gushing from their knees, crying their eyes out, whilst the mothers don't notice with glazed looks in their eyes. I judged them, just as he judged me.

I have seen the YouTube videos of people with their children in parks and someone has 'pranked' them by taking the child and seeing if they noticed and sometimes it has been a few minutes before they realized that their child was missing.

So in my case, was that momentarily lapse of not paying attention forgivable?

I certainly got away with it, the kids were fine and as far as I am concerned it is a 'safe' area that we all know well, outside their school in fact.

But would I have forgiven myself if something had happened?

I am not going to watch them like hawks the whole time, you could argue that someone could come into the back garden also and take them, but they play out there most days and I stick out my head occasionally to make sure they are ok. I can hear them most of the time anyway. The same with where I took them to ride their bikes.

Of course, when we are in places we don't know and cities and airports, they are not allowed a whiskers width away, even parks, certain ones I won't take them to unless there are two people to keep an eye on them, as they both like to do different things.

When I was 7, it went all around the village where I lived that I'd refused to accept a lift with the vicar, because he was a stranger, but I walked around the village on my own.

I know times have changed.

But you can't spend life worrying about what might happen like that all the time, they'd be wrapped in bubble wrap, never leave the house and be completely be unable to deal with life situations and a parent's sanity would be always on the precipice. Even their dance classes are no parents allowed in case we put them off, you could choose to read 'evil' into that and the teachers at school.

For the amount of time, I was actually on the tablet, I could have been having a daydream, been lost in thought, writing something down to remember for later, looking briefly in the wrong direction, talking to someone - are all those things 'bad' parenting also?

At the end of the day, it is a hard job and everyone will have a different opinion on it and how to do it 'right'. And some days will feel like this...

Note: Images from Pixabay.

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