"I Am No Child Abuser", Says Local Woman....How About You???

This past December, a woman was arrested outside of a Wal-Mart for leaving her 2-year old sleeping daughter in the family's car. You can read about it here. When I first heard the story on the news, I immediately came to the conclusion that this woman did something very, very wrong. I cited the fact that I never leave my children in our car in any parking lot. Whenever we go to our local dry cleaners, I take them with me even though I can see them from inside the store. My main reason for this, is that there have been many stories on the news lately that describe a person's car getting stolen while they went inside a store. That is bad enough by itself. But what scares me to death is that in these cases the driver's child was in the car. I know that I am a bit paranoid. Yes, I would even describe myself as overprotective in some situations. As the saying goes, though, 'better safe than sorry.'


I always was bothered by the police handcuffing this woman in front of her children. If you read the story, you will see why. The children were crying, and were very scared. I always believed that the police went a bit far on that day. I still believed this woman did something wrong.


Well, my opinion about this woman was altered somewhat when I read last week about the charges being dropped. As I read the paper, I began to believe that in this case, maybe it wasn't all black and white. Maybe I prejudged her as a bad mother. I mean we all aren't perfect and we've all made some poor decisions. The next day I read the paper and found out more on this case. What I read made me wonder, haven't we all done something that others would deem as wrong. Something that can't be viewed in black and white terms? As I thought about it, I realized that I might have made a similar mistake at my son's preschool. Let me explain. My son attends all day preschool on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. At least once a month, S. forgets his lunch which leaves me with the duty of going home to get what was supposed to be sitting by the door just as his chart says. But I digress. Last week, S. forgot his lunch. I had the Tot with me, and rather than unbuckling him and dragging him with me in the cold weather, I entered the building and handed the lunch to his teacher. I was more than 30 feet away from Tot. As I returned to my car, I pondered the fact that I did the same thing that this mother did. Did that make me just like her? Would I have gotten arrested too if this overzealous cop worked in my suburb? It didn't matter whether this was the only time or not. The fact was I left my child in the car.

I've also done things that would make the authors of many 'parenting books' cringe. Let me list a few of them.

1. I have yelled at my kids instead of just being firm. Now teachermom's husband is the best example of remaining calm and not yelling when he's angry. He still doles out consequences, but he can always do it without yelling. After visiting them, I tried to emulate him. That lasted about two days! Don't get me wrong, I don't always yell at my kids. In fact, some days I do a good job of simply remaining firm. Some days though, when I have had a bad day, I lose it and yell. So I guess I have already screwed them up.
2. I let them watch television for more than two hours some days. If I don't, I can't shower in the morning or make dinner at night. Those authors would say that is no excuse!
3. Some days I don't make my kids clean up the playroom. Oh, and some days I clean it up myself....I'm bad...bad! For the record, I have made my kids clean it up too.
4. I never have my kids make their beds. I change the sheets, and they pull up the covers when they go to bed.
5. At times, I don't like my kids. I love them always, but there are times when I don't want to be with them. And sometimes, I think to myself that dogs are easier than kids because they don't talk!
6. I have driven over the speed limit with my kids in the car.
7. Accidentally, mind you, I have sworn at another driver.
8. I don't cook a nutritious breakfast most days. Cream of Wheat, Nutrigrain bars, waffles and raisin toast are my favorites.
9. I try to cook Monday through Friday, but we do go out to eat on the weekends. The kids have mac n'cheese. Yes, I'm aware of how fattening that is. Pizza is our friend too. Most of the time, we try to eat as a family, but there are times we can't because my husband works LONG hours to, you know, help us live.
10. I never play Raffi or any other kid CD in the car. However, my kids can sing songs by Justin Timberlake, Gwen Steffani and the like.

I could go on and on. My point here is that none of us is perfect. We all do things we aren't proud of. Many of us prejudge other mothers and we shouldn't. Oh, as for those parenting book authors, I say screw 'em. I bet most of them have nannies raising their own kids!