In my program Raising Careful, Confident Kids in a Crazy World, I tell parents about something that happened to me as a child. I tell the story not because it is entertaining or fun to tell – it is not – but because it demonstrates conscious parenting, something to which I enthusiastically subscribe and encourage others to subscribe to as well.
When I was eight years old I lived in a small Midwestern town. My older sister and I walked home for lunch each day, a short four-blocks. On the way back we would take pennies we had squirreled away to buy licorice at the candy store on the corner.
On this day we came to that same corner and stopped to wait for the light to change. Suddenly a man on a motorcycle pulled up along side the curb, grabbed me and put me on his bike. I remember hearing a scream. It was mine. I yelled at my sister to go get our mother. He roared off with me sitting in front of him.
I don’t remember if I cried or screamed or struggled of froze. But only two blocks later, he dumped me on the curb like a load of dirty laundry and disappeared. The police never found him. The called it an aborted abduction attempt. Call it whatever you want. It scared me to my core.
Many years later, when my daughter was in fourth grade, she and her friend were walking to choral practice after school, a short four block walk. According to the choral director who called me, the girls were in her office upset and crying because a group of older boys had chased them. They were fine, just shaken up.
That afternoon, as I watched anxiously out the window for my daughter’s carpool to arrive, the frightened 8-year-old girl inside me popped up and said, “The world is a dangerous place. Keep her close so that no one will harm her.”
When the driver pulled up in front of our house, I went out to meet her. I pulled her close, took a deep breath said, “I am so proud of you. You dropped your backpack and ran to get help. That’s exactly what we taught you to do.”
“I know,” she said, as she headed to the front door where she turned and added, “But, I don’t want to walk to rehearsal any more.”
The victorious little girl inside me nearly shouted, “That’s right, the world is not safe! Stay close to me and no one will harm you.”
But it was the parent who again spoke and said, “I can only imagine how scared you were. No one has the right to make you feel afraid. I can promise you this. A week from now you won’t feel this way, because I am going to help you.” And we walked in to the house together.
Over the weekend she and I talked about what would help her feel safe again. She proposed pelting the boys with water balloons. After all, her choral group and their intramural basketball team met at the same building, so she knew where they would be.
I understood her desire for revenge but proposed another option. “How about an apology from the boys” I asked. “Would that help?”
“I can get one of those?” she asked incredulously.
“Absolutely,” I assured her. “All it takes is a call to the principal.”
She is 21 now and still has the note of apology from the boys who chased her and her friend. I think the note symbolizes her triumph over fear; she continued to walk to rehearsal and never again had a problem. I read the note now and then and smile, remembering sitting next to my daughter in the principal’s office across from the uncomfortable ringleader who thrust the note in to my daughter’s hands.
Of this I am sure: as parents, we are responsible for our own healing. How important it is to recognize our wounds and not let them play out in our relationship with our children. When we have the discipline and commitment to do that, when it counts, we are truly the best parents we can be.