Parenting fears.

I saw a short part of a Penn and Teller episode about how parenting fears are- in their eloquent words- bulls**t. The part of the episode I saw was mentioning stranger danger. I didn’t really listen, but I am always fearful of such things. When I lived in my old neighborhood, there was a period of several weeks where some people tried to entice three different children into their car. So do not tell me that stranger danger isn’t real. I have watched several episodes of that show, and sometimes I am amused, sometimes I am horrified (ie when they convinced a very large number of people to ban the harmful compound, hydrogen dioxide) and sometimes I just plain don’t agree. This was a case of the latter.

How can you not be fearful when you are getting daily emails from the CPSC (consumer product safety commission) about recalls of various children’s items for a variety of reasons including dangers to health, potential for injury, and several incidences of death? I am always horrified when I read the phrase “the agency has received numerous reports of injuires and two reports of death resulting from…”. These are children- sometimes babies- that are affected, and I don’t even want to imagine how the parents are feeling.

Usually these recalls don’t apply to me. Well, there was that brief period where it seemed like we would have to empty out our toybin because everything was covered with lead. Lately I have been getting a lot of crib recalls which definitely don't apply to me, anymore, but they might affect my sister… so I have to scan through those and then forward them on to her if I can’t definitively determine that she does not have said product.

And then there are other hazards. Playgrounds. Parking lots. And traffic. Which brings me to the point of this post. Please send your thoughts and prayers out to my cousins Lisa and Ruben, and their son Jackson, who was hit by a car a few days ago. He went out to get something out of the car while watching his sister play soccer, and then the world came crashing down around them in an instant. They live in California and my parents happened to arrive for a visit just hours after the accident, so my mom has been updating me. Jack is hanging in, but the poor kid is in a lot of pain and his parents must be feeling it with him- and wishing they could suffer for him. How precious and fragile we all are.