Monday, September 19, 2011

In response to Elisabeth Rohm's blog post on people.com.

She posted the link on fb, and I felt compelled to comment. So, to share:



As a dad, I probably fall into the categorization that you laid out in that I'm not getting into a panic over the child care place at the gym that only fed our 10 month old half his bottle, because he's easily distracted by the noise of the other kids. My worries tend to gravitate towards the 'Is some inattentive driver going to run a red light or drift out of their lane and completely annihilate us?'

"Look, as far as I’m concerned, terrible things happen to children all the time." In the context of your unvoiced concerns, this is the line that I tie to your self-confessed paranoia. This goes beyond a healthy dose. This is the slippery slope that makes airlines have a policy re-seat unaccompanied minors that are seated next to men, and make Gayle King proclaim, with my interpretation, that men are generally useless at helping children at best, and out to kidnap them on other atrocities, at worst, and the worst is more likely than the best.

This is not to downplay the terrible things that do happen to children. This is to paraphrase from Lenore Skenazy, in that we as a first world society are safer now than we've ever been, the difference is that we instantly hear of every single incident, with full detail.

I've come to the conclusion that the best I'm going to be able to do is to teach Emmett to make the best decisions he can with the information he has available, and for his mother and I to trust that those we put in charge of him are being diligent. If we find that they're not as diligent as we'd like, we do what we can in our control. We don't put them in charge of him any more. We'd Yelp/Angie's list about it, too.

All that aside, you're doing just fine. You know it, but it's nice to hear it from someone else now and then, eh?

No response yet.

One thing I do like about twitter and fb and the like is having more or less direct lines of communication with people, where a comment like this might actually draw a comment from the author.