Today as I left Maddie Lou and Will with their Kinderuni group, I thought about the absolute insanity of ever letting your kids out of your sight. Mary Ann likes to quote an author who says that having kids is like ripping your heart out and having it run around outside of you. If I think about all of the things that could go wrong--lost kids on the mean streets of Vienna, streetcar derailments, sudden thromboses and ambulance rides with incomprehensible Austrians--it makes me want to hole up in my basement in Utah with my kids safely within earshot. Yes, all of those things are possible. But not probable. Again, I refer to MA and her terms: "possibility" parenting vs. "probability" parenting.
Last evening, for example, I let my kids go out alone and run up to the Market of the Jolly Egyptians around the corner. The possibilities were endless. I just finished reading Nabokov's
Lolita two days ago (the book referred to in Sting's "Don't Stand so Close to Me") and so I am sure there is some perverted Viennese or Egyptian Humbert Humbert around every corner waiting to molest my little ripped-out hearts. Or a truck full of Sachertorte could mow them down. Or they could get lost and end up hungry, cold and turning tricks at Westbahnhof. As you can see in the picture, I let them go. Getting up with a newborn is the second hardest thing a parent has to do. The hardest: the decades-long process of letting go. Of course, you will also notice in the picture that I was hanging out of our apartment window and watching them the whole time. Baby steps, right?
Which leads us to "Probability" parenting. Yes, it is possible that a truckful of Azerbizjani terrorists could pull up and grab my kids. But it is not probable. Yes, it is possible that if I buy my kids the pocketknives that they wanted with all of their hearts, they could cut off a finger. Well, no fingers were lost, but you can see Will getting bandaged up by the owner of a bicycle rental-place in the Prater. So I still am working out the possibility/probabiltiy ratios. Will has a boo-boo, but also a really cool pocket knife from Vienna. And a growing respect for how sharp it is. Letting go---letting go---
Last evening, for example, I let my kids go out alone and run up to the Market of the Jolly Egyptians around the corner. The possibilities were endless. I just finished reading Nabokov's Lolita two days ago (the book referred to in Sting's "Don't Stand so Close to Me") and so I am sure there is some perverted Viennese or Egyptian Humbert Humbert around every corner waiting to molest my little ripped-out hearts. Or a truck full of Sachertorte could mow them down. Or they could get lost and end up hungry, cold and turning tricks at Westbahnhof. As you can see in the picture, I let them go. Getting up with a newborn is the second hardest thing a parent has to do. The hardest: the decades-long process of letting go. Of course, you will also notice in the picture that I was hanging out of our apartment window and watching them the whole time. Baby steps, right?
Comments
“I feel, as a parent, the hardest thing for me to learn was to grant autonomy to my children. Just at the point when they got old enough to be able to really harm themselves, I couldn’t control them. I had to allow them their freedom, and that is very hard for a parent to do, because you don’t want anything bad to happen. But if you don’t allow them the freedom to lead their own lives, then something bad HAS happened. Being a parent means you’re committed to worry.”
(This comment would be a lot more readable if it had even one concrete example, huh? Oh, well.)
Isaac: "Mom, can I get an airsoft gun and plastic bee bees for my birthday?"
Me, energetic and vigilant: "No! It looks like a real gun! You could put your sister's eye out!"
Me, tired and worn-down: "You mean you've already picked out your birthday present and I can just order it from this website you found it at and actually have some of your birthday shopping done as much as a week early? Let's get it for you! (But please never aim it at your sister.)"