Perspective is Everyting: Child Sleeping in Car in Winter

As I arrived at work this morning I was very surprised and angered to see a child in the car next to where I parked, huddled over, sleeping. Temperatures were in the mid 20's, and although the kid was wearing a knit cap and warm coat, the car was not running. More importantly though, their parent was nowhere to be found! I was furious.

I stood there for what felt like an eternity, vacillating over what to do. Then I marched into my office to call the police.

Once inside, I took a few breaths and observed the car for 2-3 minutes, all the while pacing by the window, and venting to my co-workers. How could this person be so irresponsible? What terrible parent would leave a sleeping child in their car in the middle of winter? At that point I couldn't take it, and decided to walk back out to the car.

At fist I couldn't decide if I should knock on the window. What if I woke the child? Wouldn't I really scare her? So instead I stepped towards the car for a closer look and take action...
I'm glad I did too. The "sleeping child" turned out to be a knit cap pulled over a bag of items.

I walked back into the office just in time to have my boss ask if he needed to call the police...I guess one never quits being a parent.

Lesson of the day: Perspective is everything!

Kids Will Be Kids: They'll Repeat Everything

As a parent with little ears that now repeat EVERYTHING I say, I’m starting to think about my communication style, especially what I say and how I say it. OK it’s a dream of mine really, to actually THINK before I speak, has elluded me much of my life. I get so I excited, or fear I'll forget, that I just spit it out - It's like my thoughts simply bubbly over into and out of my mouth. Now however, I have really tried hard not to say the things I don’t want my children to repeat. Certain phrases, slang or catch-words are off-limits in our household, and I have certainly tried to stop my children from saying them after hearing their friends or other family member’s utterances of them. But that is really hard to do.

Yes my sweet little blue-eyes baby girl has been heard to blurt under her breath "Dammit!"

Apparently this is an parenthood epidemic even worse than catching the flu in a room filled with snot-nosed, sneezing and slurping first-graders. I know my friends all tell me it's true. Why just the other day one of my mom-friends was telling me of her experience with her son.

She told me that their dog had recently gotten fixed, and she was trying to get her son to say that their “dog had gotten neutered”. Apparently she expressed one too many times that the dog had gotten his balls chopped off. Although, who knows, maybe she said it just once. After all that’s all it takes!

At any rate, the boy came over to spend the evening with me and my son. As they were playing together, the young man said to me matter-of-factly, “You know my dog got neutered.”

“I know.” I said.

And this is where it gets tricky, as my son then chimed in, “What’s neutered?”

I could have said that’s when they remove the dog's testicles – Nah, that sounds too technical for 5-year-olds. Besides I really didn’t want to explain the term when I wasn’t sure what the other parent would think. So taking a moment to pause, and taking a huge breath, I told him, “That’s when the animal doctor, the veterinarian, makes it so the dog can’t have babies.” Simple. Honest. To the point. And hopefully something that was not likely to get into the great ‘where do babies come from’ debate… Except then I heard from our young guest:

“No that’s when they chop his balls off.”

There was a moment of silence in the room, followed by gales of laughter ringing in my ears, my own laughter, as two young boys stared at me like a crazed lunatic. I couldn’t help but wonder, what my children are repeating to someone else…

Raising children sure makes life interesting!