The Parent Trap

AP Photo/David Zalubowski

Last Thursday afternoon in Colorado, Falcon the Balloon Boy was supposedly adrift thousands of feet above the earth. His fate was uncertain and despite the life and death nature of the story, amateur comedians lined up to take shots at the boy, his parents, and the ridiculousness of the situation.

Meanwhile 2,000 miles across the country I felt nothing but worry and fear for this kid’s safety. In a rare moment for me, I couldn’t find a reason to laugh.

You may be thinking- what’s wrong with you?? Of course it’s easy to look back and realize we were all punk’d that day. But setting aside the ultimate outcome, there was a point in time where one thing seemed clear: a child was in trouble. That’s when the parent inside me kicked in. There was a time when I was the one who could chuckle at this story and even toss a few zingers of my own. I had this wonderful sense of detachment where the reward of the laugh was well worth the guilt I felt for poking fun. All that went out the window five years ago when my first daughter was born.

So what changed? The best way to describe it is I know a few things I didn’t know before. I know that awful feeling of seeing one of my kids scared or in pain. I know the panic that sets in when I lose track of them for a split second in a store and fear that I’ve lost them. I know what it’s like to take them to the hospital with an injury that requires more than just a band-aid. I know the helpless feeling of watching them go off on a school bus for the first time and realizing I need to trust them in someone else’s care. I know how much I want to hug them when I’m away on business and the best I can manage is a phone call or a video chat.

All these experiences have changed the way I look at things because I imagine how I would feel if a helpless child were one of mine. It’s the reason I can barely bring myself to read news stories about some of the horrible, abusive situations that kids live and die in these days. Don’t get me wrong- these stories impacted me before I had children. The difference is that now I’m better equipped to empathize with the parents, and I feel a sense of responsibility for children the goes beyond just my own.

Consider the situation of a screaming baby on an airplane. In my pre-child days I would have kept my head down and been mildly annoyed that the baby had the nerve to interrupt my flight. Today I pride myself on making eye contact with the parents and giving them a knowing smile. I now understand how much that smile would mean to me if I were in their shoes. Similarly I find myself keeping an eye out for lost kids at playgrounds, or children playing close to a busy street. There’s comfort in knowing there are other parents out there who would step in and help my kids if I couldn’t be there to keep them out of harm’s way.

In this world we live in, is it a bad thing to believe we all should be looking out for each other’s children? You might disagree but I’m going to do it anyway. Even if I get burned a couple times by kids named after birds.

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Tags: balloon boy, Falcon, fear, Kids, news, parenting, worry