'What If?' Drives Parents Crazy

What if?

It's a phrase that allows us to conjure up the very worst and still feel as if we're being reasonable. What if you bite into a Snickers bar and choke to death on one of the nuts? It could happen, after all.

What if you go swimming and get stung by a Portuguese man-of-war? What if you go to the zoo and the zookeeper forgets to lock the lion cage?

What if you leave your 5-year-old in the children's room of your local library for three minutes while you go to the adult room to check out your book? A psycho killer COULD just happen to be in the neighborhood. He COULD sneak into the room (if he's good at crouching behind the 2-foot bookshelves). He COULD grab the girl silently (if she isn't inclined to scream when being kidnapped). And he COULD drag her out of the room without the librarian noticing anything peculiar (if the librarian is VERY absorbed in her card catalog work). Right?

On the basis of all those coulds born of "What if the very WORST, IMPROBABLE, ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE thing happens?" parents across the country are screaming at a mom who did just that; she left her daughter in the children's room, after alerting the librarian on duty, while she went upstairs to check out a book.

I know because after I wrote up the incident on a Web site called ParentDish, 1,400 people commented, the vast majority of them convinced that this mom was "crazy" (or even "should be shot") because, one said, "There is danger around every corner." And, said another, "We live in a cruel, evil world and if you think for one second that you don't, you're a complete moron." And, chimed in another, "To leave your young child for one minute is too much."

It is? We are not allowed to leave our kids for 60 seconds? If we want to run out and put money in the meter while our son is watching a movie in the theater? If we want to go into the bathroom stall alone and our daughter is playing at the sink? Are we not allowed to do anything without our kids Velcroed to us?

This is a new vision of child rearing and a radical one, all based on conjuring up gruesome, almost cinematic what-ifs instead of what Chris Byrne, The Toy Guy, calls "What is?"

"What is?" has to do with reality.

What is really happening in the library when the mom leaves to go check out a book? The child IS reading. A librarian IS in the room. No one else IS there. The mom IS upstairs, no farther than she'd be in a two-story house.

And yet, one distraught commenter wrote, "Don't leave your child for one moment! Once when my daughter was two she disappeared while I was shopping. She was around my legs while I looked at clothes right by the mall door. I frantically asked for help from the employees who just wouldn't do anything. So I ran down the mall looking for her and there was my daughter just running around having a great time at the other end of the mall. The WORST moments of my life. She is now 35 years old."

Interesting. Her child is not dead in a ditch. She has made it to 35. And yet her mom uses this story as a cautionary tale.

Well, so will I: "What if?" is terrifying, paralyzing and guilt-inducing. Horrible "What if?" scenarios have haunted this woman, who did nothing irresponsible or even particularly dangerous, for 33 years.

What IS the truth?

We have an inflated sense of danger, brought on by the media, that is driving us crazy and making impossible demands on us parents.

"What if" we decided to parent based on "What is" from now on?

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM