I try to teach Earl about stranger danger. When I was her age, I was acutely aware that even the old man on the walker on the other side of the street could potentially turn into a ninja and swipe me from my mother’s side without anyone noticing. Earl…loves strangers. Will tell them her life story. And mine, too, if she sees fit.
Recently, we’ve had an odd woman going door to door telling whomever answers the she works for the elementary school up the street. She gets nosy about the kids in the house. Too nosy. Most of the people I know who have encountered her have not only been wary, they’ve been weirded out and ended up slamming the door in her face because she’s so dang pushy. We’ve talked to Earl about the woman, about keeping her eyes open when she’s playing with the neighbor kids, about how the authorities don’t think she’s dangerous, but you just never know.=
Earl’s best friend’s father didn’t slam the door in the woman’s face. He invited her in to have dinner with the family. Suddenly, in Earl’s eyes, the women went from a potential threat to “She’s really nice!”
This scares me. We had instilled not terror, but a healthy fear about strangers using this woman as the best example. And now, her friend’s father’s careless (in my eyes, compassionate in other eyes, I’m sure) decision to welcome this complete stranger, this solicitor, this woman asking prying, uncomfortable questions into his home, with his young children, has showed her that, yes, even people we think are bad can sometimes be good. Which is an ideal, isn’t it? But so much more dangerous than the niggling awareness in the back of a brain that sometimes even seemingly good people are bad, sometimes safe seeming things are dangerous.
I’m not positive how to deal with this with Earl. On one hand, this is her “very best friend,” and I don’t want to be the whiny parent who pulls the girls apart because, seriously, they live right there. On the other hand, I don’t approve of their choice to invite her in. Now, do I hold it against them? No. Do I judge them? Not really. It’s just not a decision I would have made, and I want Earl to understand why. In a second grader’s mind, however, that’s a tedious line to toe. “Look, you don’t have to fuss at them or say anything to them or comment or say they’re wrong and you’re right. You just need to understand why I, your mother, would not have made this same choice.” In her brain, that would translate to, “I want you to go to their house right now and tell them I said they were wrong and it was a bad decision and you should never ever ever let a stranger into your house, thus sayeth my mother.”
How would you handle the situation with your child? And how do you guide your children along that path between respecting potential danger but still wanting to see and embrace the good in the world?
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