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September 10, 2008
Deviation
I think I've mentioned before that we live right across the street from the elementary school Jamie attends. This has been great on days when one of the younger kids is asleep, since I can watch out the window until Jamie is almost to the corner, run out and meet her and be home before anyone notices. (In theory, anyway, since Owen seems to sense when I leave the house for real and always wakes up. I can stick my head out the door to look at something ten times and he won't even budge, but as soon as I walk towards the corner, he wakes up. Good thing I'm not gone long.)
Mornings, we've been walking Jamie almost to the door of the school, partly because until now, she's requested that when I give her the choice to walk from the corner, and partly because Rex enjoys walking her the whole way. In the afternoons, a teacher walks a huge herd of children up to the other side of the crosswalk, and half turn to the right and walk off to god knows where, while the other half cross in small packs to our side of the street. Of those, a bunch break off and cross again. (The stop sign is at a T intersection, if that helps.) I always wait on the corner on our side of the street, rather than cross and get all mixed up with the tiny little hooligans.
I've met a few parents who wait on the corner with me, but I don't actually know any of them or they're kids. On the other side of the other street across from the school (yeah, try to picture that. I should draw a map.) there lives a woman who I've hung out with several times, and several of her/our friends wait for their kids on her driveway. Most days I just smile and wave and stay on my side of the street.
Today I deviated.
I should never deviate. I spent a minute too long talking to them, and I missed Jamie crossing at the stop sign. She immediately turned toward home, and in hindsight, i should have just drug Katie and Owen along faster and caught up to her. Instead, I called to her to get her attention. She turned and started running back towards me, running right out into the street. Thank god the crossing guard already had all the traffic stopped, because in spite of me waving my arm and screeching GO BACK! GO BACK! she ran halfway across the street, then turned and looped across the center of the intersection, finally hit the first crosswalk, and then ran back to the group of kids.
I'm blushing just typing this. I'm not so much for drawing attention to myself and my parenting mishaps, yo.
The teacher walked her across the street back to me, at which point Jamie started bawling. I'm totally not blaming her for that, either. I mean, the kid can bawl at the drop of a hat over nothing, but I'm pretty sure she was truly freaked out by the whole experience. Running around in the middle of the street like a chicken with it's head cut off isn't her style. At home, yes, but not in the middle of the street.
I'm not sure if I should have waited, but I squatted down right there and hugged her, calmed her, and then talked calmly to her about what she should have done, and that when I yell stop, she should STOP RIGHT THERE. This is the point where she started alternating between pissed off and teary, so when she calmed down again, we walked home, and tried to have the discussion again. I had planned to go out this evening and play crossing guard with her to practice, but we were rained out.
I feel like the whole thing was somehow my fault (aside from the not being where I was supposed to be, because duh, totally my fault), but we've talked to her before about always waiting til the crossing guard says it's ok to walk, and I wouldn't expect her to be so wigged out at seeing me that she would totally lose control of her senses. She did ask that I let her walk to school tomorrow from the stop sign, so I don't think she was too traumatized.
But I don't think I'll be getting that picture out of my head for a while.
Posted by me at September 10, 2008 9:09 PM
Comments
Before Andrew's first day of kindergarten we practiced riding our bikes up to school. He knew just what to do and where to go. At the end of our street we make a right turn and after that we come up to an intersection and have to cross and turn left. Well the morning of the first day we come up to the first corner. I tell him to go ahead. He's supposed to just basically hug the corner and turn, we are already on the right, turning right. Well since we werent actually leaving the curb we dont wait until the road we are going onto is clear since we arent going into the traffic. Well he gets confused somehow and when I tell him to go ahead, he goes straight out into the street we are approaching, I think he was thinking it was the left turn coming up. There was totally a car coming. I dont even remember what I said exactly but basically something like Andrew! Stop! Then he kinda panics and goes across to the other side then comes back to my side and I am kind of just frozen with panic. Luckily the car coming just stopped and waited for us to sort it all out. Christ that played over and over in my head for months. We talked about it a lot so nothing like that has ever happened again. I tried to tell myself it was a learning experience.
Posted by: Bec at September 11, 2008 9:26 PM
Luckily all the traffic was stopped for the other kids crossing, although just minutes before some asshole had gunned around a car stopped by the guard.
Now I just feel like everyone is staring at me cause I have the poorly parented kid who can't listen to directions. I know that isn't true on either count, but I still feel like I'm standing in a spotlight.
Posted by: Becky at September 12, 2008 1:45 PM