Friday, October 23, 2009

Mine

I understand your desire to reprimand me, but at the same time you need to understand my need to take care of my daughter. She is 4 years old and she is our world. We love her and understand our responsibility to keep her safe. I understand your need for order and efficiency, but there is nothing more important to me than the safety of my child.

You are asking me to do something small, something that many other parents have no problems doing. Dropping them off and watching them disappear in a building, confident their child will get to where they need to be. I cannot do this.....yet.

This is our routine, this is what makes myself and my daughter comfortable. I know the stress and anxiety she would feel if I forced her to walk in herself. Right now my daughter loves school and looks forward to going everyday. I do not want to ruin that.

My daughter is 4 years old, I would never allow her to walk anywhere alone. I cannot open the door, kiss her and hope she makes her way through the maze of kids, with ages ranging from 4-18, into the cafeteria filled with every student that goes to your school, hope she successfully finds her classmates, and hope that her teacher is there to supervise. I simply cannot do that.


I see other parents doing the same thing every morning. Other parents who are not ready, other children who are not ready. I have my suspicions as to why your singled me out this morning.

I understand your concerns, but nothing, NOTHING, is more important to us than our daughter. She is our responsibility and I do what I do to protect her and to keep her safe. She is our only child and we may seem over-protective to you, but we are. We are over-protective of our 4 year old. If something happened to her, if she was hurt, or worse, it is I who will have to deal with the hurt, loss or guilt. Not you.

I understand that hundreds of students do this everyday with no incident. Chances of something going wrong from the car door to the cafeteria may be 1 in a million. But why do I have to run the risk that the one time something does happen it happens to my child? If walking her into school makes it 0 in a million then that is what I will do.

So I will continue to walk my daughter into school every morning. You can stop me everyday and everyday I will say the same thing. "I understand, but I am just not comfortable with that suggestion".

4 comments:

  1. Holy cow... you do what you feel is best. Everyone & their suggestions can suck it! xoxo

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  2. Good for you. It really doesn't matter if she's your only child or one of six, or sixteen, she's your child to take care of.

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  3. I can totally relate to this post. I not only walk my children into school, I also sit with them while they eat breakfast and then walk my (almost)8 year old daughter to class. Lucky for him, I let my 11 year old son walk himself to his class and try to refrain from too many "I love you's" in his friends vicinity.
    Great post! I really loved the line about it being you who would have to deal with the "horrors" (sorry, can't remember exact verbage) of something happening to your daughter. I could not have said it better myself.

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  4. Anonymous6:51 AM

    40 year old mother of 3 children here.....I have been there and done that. You can NEVER be too overprotective of your child. You need to do what makes you feel comfortable. DON'T ever let someone else tell you otherwise. I wish that so many more parents were like you. Thank you!!

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